Obama takes center stage

The New York Times looks at some of the potential risks of tonight's speech before 75,000 at Invesco Field. "With daunting challenges of logistics, style and substance, the plan was hatched before the Republicans began a concerted drive to paint Mr. Obama as a media sensation lacking the résumé to be president. Now Obama aides are feeling all the more pressure to bring a lofty candidacy to ground level, showing that Mr. Obama grasps the concerns of everyday Americans."

"On Wednesday, workers were still making changes to Invesco Field, home to the Denver Broncos, so it would feel more intimate, less like the boisterous rallies that served Mr. Obama so well early in the primaries, but also created the celebrity image that dogs him. They were still testing camera angles, so Mr. Obama would appear among the giant crowd, not above it. They took steps to reduce the echo effect, familiar to football fans, of speaking in such a cavernous space. Planners scrapped their idea to turn the audience of 75,000 into a giant phone bank, in response to fears that the cellphone system would crash (people will instead be asked to text-message friends and neighbors to support the campaign, program aides said would be effective nonetheless.)"

A Democratic senator told MSNBC's David Shuster that Obama's speech tonight might be a bit different than what some may be expecting in a big stadium. Per this senator, Obama himself said the speech will not have the kind of soaring rhetoric some may be expecting.

The New York Post goes to the extreme with Obama's speech set up for tonight, which has some Roman columns. Its cover: " 'O' my God." But as Politico's Ben Smith points out, "Republicans who are mocking Obama's appearance haven't mentioned it, but George W. Bush accepted his own nomination in 2004 on a set with a similar neoclassical theme, with columns rising on either side of him… Indeed, the Bush set and the Obama sets currently look strikingly similar, with the podium set well in front of the columns, and connected by a path."

The New York Times profiles Obama. "Even before he entered public life, he began honing not only his political skills, but also his mental and emotional ones. He developed a self-discipline so complete, friends and aides say, that he has established dominion over not only what he does but also how he feels. He does not easily exult, despair or anger: to do so would be an indulgence, a distraction from his goals. Instead, they say, he separates himself from the moment and assesses."

"But with … Obama officially becoming the Democratic presidential nominee on Wednesday night, some of the same qualities that have brought him just one election away from the White House - his virtuosity, his seriousness, his ability to inspire, his seeming immunity from the strains that afflict others - may be among his biggest obstacles to getting there."

As reported yesterday, Obama and Biden will campaign in Pennsylvania the day after the convention. Now we've learned that on Saturday, the duo will head to Ohio, where they will first attend a memorial service in Cleveland for Stephanie Tubbs Jones before holding a rally in Dublin. On Sunday, the two will discuss the economy in Toledo.